The British Library, Tate, V&A, National Portrait Gallery, BFI, Wellcome Trust, Imperial War Museum and JISC, in a letter published in Times, have sought to ensure the safe passage of Clause 42 of the UK government's Digital Economy Bill. If passed, the bill is expected to provide the UK with the best orphan works solution in the world, unlocking vast amounts of collections for the nation. Orphan works are works with no known owner.
It has been observed that proposed amendments to the Orphan Works Clause 42 of the Digital Economy Bill will pose a major barrier to mass digitisation of content by the UK's leading national institutions. Nearly 40 percent of some of these institutions' collections are orphan works. Restricting the digitisation of these works is seen to limit access and leave a huge volume of historically important collections ‘in limbo'. A significant proportion of these were never originally intended for commercial use and should not be treated in the same way as commercially produced in-copyright orphan works, it is argued.
In the view of these signatories, copyright collecting societies do have a major role to play in managing the copyright of known and commercially published rights holders. However, they are not the only institutions capable of acting responsibly in relation to orphan works. The educational and cultural sectors also have a long history of respecting rights holders in the provision of access, combined with an unrivalled knowledge of the unique material that sits within their collections, it is noted. The suggestion of an orphan works licence for such institutions, put forward under the Digital Economy Bill, is seen to offer a flexible system.
The Digital Economy Bill proposes a system that allows a cultural or educational organisation to apply for a licence for the use of these works. Such a flexible system is the right one given the types of works that fall into the category of orphan works, it has been stated.
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